Today, I´m sharing with you another one of my favourite chapters from Anthony de Mello´s book The way to Love , which I think contains incredible wisdom. You can read my previous posts on this topic here and here.
This is meditation number twenty-two; please let me know what you think, and I´ll also share my opinion further down:
"Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes." - Luke 12:37
En todas las partes del mundo, la gente anda buscando el amor, porque todos están convencidos de que sólo el amor puede salvar al mundo. Pero muy pocos comprenden en qué consiste realmente el amor y cómo brota en el corazón humano. Con demasiada frecuencia se equipara el amor a los buenos sentimientos para con los demás, a la benevolencia, a la no-violencia, al servicio… Pero todas esas cosas, en sí mismas, no son el amor. Love springs from awareness. It is only inasmuch as you see someone as he or she really is here and now and not as they are in your memory or your desire or in your imagination or projection that you can truly love them, otherwise it is not the person that you love but the idea that you have formed of this person, or this person as the object of your desire not as he or she is in themselves.
Therefore, the first act of love is to see this person or this object, this reality as it truly is. And this involves the enormous discipline of dropping your desires, your prejudices, your memories, your projections, your selective way of looking, a discipline so great that most people would rather plunge headlong into good actions and service than submit to the burning fire of this asceticism. When you set out to serve someone whom you have not taken the trouble to see, are you meeting that person’s need or your own? So the first ingredient of love is to really see the other.
The second ingredient is equally important to see yourself, to ruthlessly flash the light of awareness on your motives, your emotions, your needs, your dishonesty, your self-seeking, your tendency to control and manipulate. This means calling things by their name, no matter how painful the discovery and the consequences. If you achieve this kind of awareness of the other and yourself, you will know what love is. For you will have attained a mind and a heart that is alert, vigilant, clear, sensitive, a clarity of perception, a sensitivity that will draw out of you an accurate, appropriate response to every situation at every moment. Sometimes you will be irresistibly impelled into action, at others you will be held back and restrained. You will sometimes be made to ignore others and sometimes give them the attention they seek. At times you will be gentle and yielding, at others hard, uncompromising, assertive, even violent. For the love that is born of sensitivity takes many unexpected forms and it responds not to prefabricated guidelines and principles but to present, concrete reality. When you first experience this kind of sensitivity you are likely to experience terror. For all your defenses will be torn down, your dishonesty exposed, the protected walls around you burned.
Think of the terror that comes to a rich man when he sets out to really see the pitiful condition of the poor, to a power-hungry dictator when he really looks at the plight of the people he oppresses, to a fanatic, a bigot, when he really sees the falsehood of his convictions when they do not fit the facts. The terror that comes to the romantic lover when he decides to really see that what he loves is not his beloved but his image of her. That is why the most painful act the human being can perform, the act that he dreads the most is the act of seeing. It is in that act of seeing that love is born, or rather more accurately, that act of seeing is Love.
Una vez que empieces a mirar, tu sensibilidad te llevará a tomar conciencia, no sólo de las cosas que decidas ver, sino de todas las demás cosas. Y tu pobre ego tratará desesperadamente de embotar esa sensibilidad, porque se ha visto despojado de sus defensas y se ha quedado sin protección y sin nada a lo que aferrarse. Si alguna vez te permites mirar, será tu muerte. Por eso es por lo que el amor es tan aterrador: porque amar es mirar, y mirar es morir. Pero es también la más deliciosa y estimulante experiencia de este mundo, porque en la muerte del ego está la libertad, la paz, la serenidad, la alegría…
Si lo que de veras deseas es amar, entonces ponte inmediatamente a mirar; pero tómatelo en serio. Fíjate en alguien que te desagrade y percibe de veras tus perjuicios; fíjate en alguien o algo a lo que te aferres y comprieba realmente el sufrimiento, la inutilidad y la falta de libertad que supone aferrarse… Y contempla detenida y tiernamente los rostros humanos y la conducta humana. Tómate tiempo para mirar asombrado la naturaleza, el vuelo de un pájaro, la lozanía de una flor, la caída de una hoja seca, el fluir de un río, la salida de la luna, la silueta de una montaña a contraluz… Y mientras lo haces, la sólida coraza que protege tu corazón se reblandecerá y se fundirá, y tu corazón rebosará de sensibilidad y delicadeza. Se desvanecerá la oscuridad de tus ojos, tu visión se hará clara y penetrante, y al fin sabrás lo que es el amor.
Anthony de Mello, The way to love, Be awake
What are your thoughts on this explanation of what love is? Food for thought, isn´t it?
I´ve highlighted in bold a few ideas that I consider key to all this, and I´d like to clarify a few things:
- First, I don´t think it´s possible to see reality exactly as it is, given that our brain always processes information received through the senses by applying certain filters and patterns.
- Second, that´s precisely why it´s even more critical that we work on identifying those filters and patterns, to get a clear picture of how we´re constantly distorting reality, and have the ability to minimize those biases as much as possible.
- Y tercero, que lo de «matar al ego» no es necesario… De hecho, ni siquiera es posible: el ego forma parte de nosotros, es la estructura mental que nos hemos montado para poder desenvolvernos en este mundo, así que no podemos eliminarlo por completo. Pero lo que sí podemos hacer, una vez más, es ser conscientes de que existe y aprender cómo funciona, para saber reconocer los pensamientos que nos plantea, y poder elegir cuándo hacerle caso y cuándo no.
In view of all this, I think it makes sense to swap the order of the elements, or as Anthony de Mello puts it, the ingredients: first, let´s focus on getting to know, understand and manage ourselves well (which, by the way, is a process , so it requires time and patience), and then, over time, we´ll begin to get to know, understand and finally love others.